Genloc
Platform: Commodore 64
Genre: Platformer, Scrolling
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1994
Players: 1
Programmer: Michael Strelecki
Musician: Thomas Detert
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Developed by X-Ample and published by 64'er in 1994.

The game does have a story, but it's written in poorly translated English. The game requires the player to hunt and destroy dragon eggs on each level of the game. Once the eggs have been destroyed, you must destroy the dragon matriarch that begins to hunt you down.

This game has the dubious honour of being the most difficult game I have ever played. Even using tool assists to slow the game down to 50% of it's normal speed did little to make it easier to complete.

The eggs spawn in specific places, but it's not clear as to what causes them to appear. It definitely involves moving through the level in a particular order, but without knowing what that is it results in a lot of wasted time running from one end of the level to the other.

The player has a finite amount of health and contact with any enemy will reduce it by a significant proportion, although it does regenerate over time. The enemies themselves appear in vast numbers and move in patterns that make them difficult to shoot or avoid, thus adding to the overall challenge.

If that wasn't enough, the player has a finite amount of time to find each egg. Destroying an egg resets the timer, but that assumes that the eggs can be found.

Finally, destroying the dragon matriarch is an absolute nightmare. As far as I can tell, you have to do enough damage to her whilst keeping her on the screen the whole time. If she moves off the screen then her heath resets and you have to start attacking all over again. What makes this particularly tough is the sheer number of exploding bombs that she drops, which make following her extremely difficult.

Technically, the game is very solid and has some great art work and great music by Thomas Detert. Stylistically, it's similar to Flimbo's Quest, but is much harder (and Flimbo's Quest was pretty challenging!).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Dc3IuVKEw
